Thread by @SethAbramson

Donald Trump just called Joe Biden an "enemy of the state" at his rally.

He did this in the first 120 seconds of his speech.

I assume the U.S. Secret Service will investigate?

Trump has now described the legal, orderly, court-ordered search of Mar-a-Lago—done only after Trump defied a subpoena—as a military maneuver. He just called it an "invasion" by "vicious monsters" after calling it a "raid." He's called it a "break-in" half a dozen times already.

This is, quite simply, a speech intended to incite domestic terrorists to kill FBI agents and members of the Biden administration. It is shocking that there are no legal consequences for Incitement anymore. Trump has just now called the legal search of Mar-a-Lago an "assault."

Trump is now subtly implying the FBI are like Nazi stormtroopers, falsely saying that they "stormed" Mar-a-Lago. (There was no "break-in", there was no "storming", there was no "assault.")

And now he has just promised "a backlash the likes of which no one has ever seen before."

Trump says "we [his MAGA followers] have no choice" but to orchestrate "a backlash the likes of which no one has ever seen before" because the Democrats are trying to "destroy" America and have constituted a tyrannical government. Everything he is saying bespeaks future violence.

Trump now says that the search of Mar-a-Lago was a violent attack on the "hopes and dreams" of everyone who voted for him in 2020—a number (I kid you not) he estimated in his speech could be as high as 225 million people (about 150 million Americans in *total* voted in 2020).

Trump has just told more lies about the Trump-Russia scandal in four minutes than I have ever seen him tell.

(Just a reminder, here, that Donald Trump colluded with the Kremlin *repeatedly* during the 2016 campaign, and then obstructed all attempts to investigate his collusion.)

Trump's rhetoric is impossible to follow. He says that by January 2021 he'd saved America—making the nation stronger than it'd ever been in 240 years. But his salvation was *also* apparently so shoddy that a man he deems addled was able to *destroy* all he did in months. Uh...?🤪

Anyway, now he's back to saying he knew virtually nothing about Russia when he took office in 2017.

(In fact, he entered office having spent decades—decades—more obsessed with Russia than almost any businessman in America. His fabulism is beyond pathological. It is sociopathic.)

He is fully unhinged. He just called COVID-19 "China dust." Biden is a "tyrant." He says his followers must "smash" the Democrats. He is repeating all the things he said *on January 6*. He is saying America is about to be "destroyed." He is *worse* today than he was on January 6.

God, the lies he is telling. Multiple lies per sentence. I am not sure he has told the truth about even a single thing yet and we are like 20 minutes into his "speech."

He is literally *in* a building with empty seats throughout the upper deck and with a whole section behind him blocked off and empty and he's telling people who are *in the building with him* that the building is sold out and at capacity. Sociopathy? Psychopathy? I've lost track.

He's telling people who are *in the building with him* that "all the cameras just turned off" because of what he just said, and the people *in the building* can see that that's untrue but he says it anyway because *this is a cult*. He could declare himself God and they would nod.

He just said the 5 worst presidents in U.S. history *combined* did *less* harm to America across their decades in office than Biden has done in 18 months. How does anyone take a man seriously who says things like this? A literal circus clown would be embarrassed by this clownery.

(I *will* say, the funny thing about Trump's comment is that historians universally deem Trump to be one of that selfsame cadre of "five worst U.S. presidents" he is discussing. Another is Andrew Johnson, who was in essence pro-Confederacy during his brief post-Civil War term.)

I am not tweeting about his last three minutes of comments because they were incomprehensible to me.

At one point he was talking about the Congo, I think?

Anyway, it was all gibberish.

"Clean, beautiful coal." Yeah—he just said that.

And now he's attacking the people who got student loan forgiveness.

My state, New Hampshire, has one of the highest student loan debt loads in America (4th). I hope he never intends to win a statewide vote in this swing state.

Now he's ranting about dead birds and windmills and falsely calling the climate bill Congress just passed—which raises taxes on *no one* who makes under $400,000—the "largest tax hike [on those who make under $400K] in history."

He says the Democrats "hate America."

Now Trump, who signed the Macgregor Order—withdrawing all US troops from Afghanistan immediately—is ranting about Joe Biden doing exactly that, presumably because a) few know about the Macgregor Order and b) at the last moment his advisers convinced him not to go forward with it.

Trump says the war in Ukraine wouldn't have happened under him because he would've simply asked Putin not to invade and Putin would've instantly agreed.

Imagine being a person who believes this. I don't know about you, but I can't.

He's gone incomprehensible again. Something about the border. I zoned out. It was all word soup.

Now he's talking about Obama's looks, which somehow—for him—is a natural segue into strongly implying (right up to but shy of declaring) that he's running for president in 2024. (Seriously, I suspect Trump thinks almost daily about how much of a better a man Obama is than he is.)

Now some story about a murder that (if past is precedent) is 50%+ untrue.

Now he is complaining about the air conditioning.

And now I think he's talking about a physical Dr. Oz once gave him? I'm unclear on this.

This is the Hindenburg of speeches.

He now says the average drug dealer (I assume this includes pot dealers) causes... "500 deaths."

Uh...

And now he says "the streets of America are drenched in the blood of innocents." Um... I don't know what that means.

I kid you not, Trump just asked if he can go on a tangent.

The man first went on a tangent 5 seconds into this speech and he's been there for 40+ minutes now.

He could just as easily be giving this speech in front of a mirror. He probably has done.

He says he calls Xi "King"?

So now Trump, who says MAGA is resolutely anti-communist and anti-China, is advocating for the United States to mirror Communist China in its criminal justice system.

Like... how do the heads of the people at this rally not explode?

He now calls America a "killing field."

It appears that he asked aides to supply him with the goriest, most upsetting stories of innocent people being killed so he could get a shiver of pleasure from hearing them—oh, sorry, I mean "pretend that these are commonplace anecdotes."

He says his call to the Georgia SoS to try to steal the 2020 election was a "perfect call"—then attempts to laud cops while implying that maybe the ones at the Capitol on January 6 were "bad apples." Such a high-wire act for him, given that his pro-J6 movement now *hates* police.

Trump seems really upset by how Fetterman dresses, which is funny because Fetterman dresses *far* more like the average American than Trump or Oz or Mastriano (who I guess likes dressing as a Confederate soldier?)

Whoa—did he just falsely accuse Fetterman of being a drug addict?

He just slipped and admitted he lost Pennsylvania, then caught himself. Or, he didn't, not really, but all the cultists in the room will think he did.

I kid you not, this man who inherited $400 million from his dad is now attacking Fetterman for "leeching off his parents" (huh)?

Now Trump is letting Oz speak. This is pretty far into the speech for him to be letting Oz on stage for the first time, but in fairness it's a really long drive to Wilkes-Barre from New Jersey—where Oz lives. So it's possible Oz only recently arrived at the rally from New Jersey.

Wow—apparently Trump had allotted Oz only 60 seconds, because he's already done speaking.

Someone would have to check me on this, but I think Trump may have spent more time complaining about Oz telling him he needs to lose "20 pounds" when Oz (for some unclear reason) gave him a physical than Oz was permitted to speak for.

Trump just melodramatically stopped himself from telling a *height* joke about Shapiro—what a martyr!

Trump now says—do I even need to say "falsely"?—that Democrats' gubernatorial nominee (Shapiro) supports the killing of babies after they're born.

So much of this speech is obscene and hateful and false I have to leave out much of what Trump says, as it's deranged and dangerous.

Trump is sweating pretty profusely, which is fine, but I am noting it because he did. He (falsely) claimed it was "100 degrees" on stage.

Now he is calling Doug Mastriano, a QAnon sicko, up to the stage.

Mastriano just said he and MAGA will take Pennsylvania by "storm."

Please do not doubt that both Mastriano and Trump using the word "storm" (in both cases oddly and unnecessarily) is a QAnon ("The Storm Is Coming") wink. They love doing nasty, trollish, inciting stuff like that.

Mastriano just called Trump a hero of 9/11.

This is the part where I point out Trump *actually* spent 9/11 on TV saying a building he owned was now the tallest in New York.

(Google it.)

Oh, and *then* he lied about Muslims dancing in the streets to try to incite some killings.

Trump now declares that the CEO of Starbucks has "extremely thin legs."

This was a vital thing for him to say, apparently.

Trump is now name-checking some GOP pols in the crowd. This is the most coherent part of his speech. All the words seem to be in a logical order.

Apparently insurrectionist Marjorie Taylor Greene is in the crowd. Trump is lauding her for running a political ad about her (hypothetically-ish?) personally killing people.

He's asking two people from the Patriot Freedom Project to stand up. I don't know what that is, but until someone tells me otherwise (and because this is a live-tweet) I am going to assume that it is at least in part an insurrectionist front.

I just laughed for the first time.

After introducing a dozen Republican politicians and saying repeatedly how much he admires all of them, Trump—a politician—declared, "I hate politicians!"

Oh, sweet cognitive dissonance!

Fortunately, his followers are well-acclimated to this.

Trump is now gleefully telling a lengthy transphobic story I will not repeat.

Oh, this is sad. Trump is begging people to join Truth Social. He says Truth Social—which is nearing bankruptcy—is "hot."

I suppose it is—in the sense that I expect that Trump will drop it and have nothing more to do with it shortly.

Some ranty Big Lie stuff, now. You've heard it all before. The people there in the arena have heard it all before. It's just air. No one needs to wants to hear this stuff but Trump needs to say it for the sake of his own vanity.

He just said "we need to Take Back America"—acting surprised at his own words, like maybe he wanted to test this out as a new slogan now.

I back it 100%: "TBA."

LOL.

Now he's making a bunch of promises that are the same ones he made and broke in 2016. There is no pretending he is talking about anything but what he "will" (his words) do if he is president in 2025. It amazes me that the FEC doesn't treat him as an active presidential candidate.

Like... one of his promises is that the *federal government* will now decide what children are taught in schools.

Uh, what? Isn't that exactly what Republicans have always opposed? His "platform" is uncontrollably incoherent.

He now calls Democrats "sinister, corrupt and evil."

He's now giving a history lesson.

No mention of Revolutionary War airplanes, yet.

He just called oil "liquid gold." He says fighting climate change "will lead to our destruction." He says Biden "let" Russia "devastate Ukraine" (Huh? The United States has led a massive international coalition to aid Ukraine.) Now he opines about "weaponized law enforcement."

He says "everybody knows" Biden is "cognitively impaired," but that lie isn't the weird part. The weird part is that it sounds like an orchestra is now playing in the background? Like, he got to a point in his teleprompter speech where he agreed to read from the machine fo an ad?

THIS IS SO CREEPY. WHAT IS THIS MUSIC?

My God, they are *scoring* this turd taco of a speech like it's great oratory. Are they... hallucinatory?

No, I mean, like, *more* hallucinatory than I thought?

This music has been going on for several minutes now.

This is so bad I'm laughing. Out loud. For real. It's like he thinks this is an Inaugural Address about the Starbucks founder's feet and height jokes and transphobic anecdotes and cracks about Oz calling him fat

Like...WHAT?

OH THANK GOD HE'S DONE

CONCLUSION/ Tips are 100% optional but accepted. My Venmo is [@]SethAbramsonTwitter and my PayPal link is at sethabramson.net/pp.

I guess the only other thing I'd say is that live-tweeting a Trump speech kills a piece of your soul. I believe that. A small piece—but a piece.